Erickson: No Miami Cover-Up

Former Miami Coach Dennis Erickson denied trying to cover up drug-testing results, saying he had no obligation to inform Paul Dee, the school’s athletic director, when a football player tested positive.

Erickson said Tuesday that changes in the school’s drug-testing policy before the 1993 season virtually decreed that only counseling was required, even for multiple positives, and that administration was the responsibility of the coach.

“There was never anything about suspension,” said Erickson, who left Miami in January to coach the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks.

According to the school’s 1993 student-athlete manual, a second positive test brought a mandatory one-game suspension. The NCAA is investigating Miami’s compliance with its own drug program.

Administration

Critics of the way government has enforced Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which mandates athletic opportunity in proportion to school enrollment, told a House subcommittee in Washington that schools often have had to cut non-money-producing men’s programs, rather than add women’s teams, to accomplish gender equity within a budget. . . . Eight female students filed a class-action lawsuit against Syracuse University, saying the school’s athletic program violates Title IX and asking a judge to elevate women’s lacrosse from club to varsity status immediately.

Basketball

UCLA’s Toby Bailey, Cameron Dollar and Charles O’Bannon are among the players invited to the 1995 USA men’s national team trials, to be held June 9-11 in Colorado Springs. Among others invited are Austin Croshere, who played in high school at Crossroads in Santa Monica and is now at Providence, and Tremaine Fowlkes, who played at Crenshaw and is now at California.

Guard Cory Alexander, whose star-crossed career at Virginia was marked first by promise and then by an ankle that he broke twice, ending two seasons prematurely, has applied to be considered for the NBA draft. . . . Benny Dees has resigned after two years as coach at Western Carolina to become a high school principal in Georgia.

The Western Athletic Conference announced a multiyear contract with ESPN to televise men’s and women’s games beginning next season. . . . Wisconsin sophomore center Rashard Griffith is expected to announce Friday that he will declare for the NBA draft.

The nation’s major colleges will receive a bigger share of the money CBS pays to televise the NCAA basketball tournament. Earlier, a secret memo, authored by Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, was circulated among Division I-A conferences urging the move but the NCAA denied that the memo prompted the decision.

Football

Safety Louis Oliver, 29, a six-year NFL veteran, became a free agent when the Cincinnati Bengals terminated his contract. . . . Linebacker Lawrence Taylor is contemplating ending his 14-month retirement and rejoining Coach Bill Parcells with the New England Patriots, the New York Times reported. . . . A hearing for Tampa Bay Buccaneer running back Vince Workman, charged with drunk driving and speeding in Columbus, Ohio, is scheduled for Friday.

Boxing

Boxer Jimmy Garcia continued his steady improvement in Las Vegas from a brain injury suffered in a super featherweight title fight with Gabriel Ruelas last Saturday.

Bantamweight Carlos Navarro of Los Angeles beat Stive Naraine of Mauritius, 10-3, and joined three other U.S. competitors in the quarterfinals of the World Amateur Boxing Championships in Berlin. Germans, with 11 fighters in the quarterfinals, and Cubans, with 10, continued to dominate the tournament.

Miscellany

Mighty Duck defenseman Dave Karpa, rejected by the Kings as physically unfit to play this season after being traded by Quebec, underwent successful surgery on his right wrist after playing the second half of the season with the Ducks. . . . A second soccer fan, Paulo Vidal Ferreira, 21, died of injuries received in a fall from the second level of a Lisbon stadium when a railing gave way Sunday. . . . Madrid has joined six other cities as candidates to play host to the 1997 World Track Championships. . . . The Fresno City Council has given a group of private investors a deadline extension, until Oct. 31, to buy a triple-A baseball team for the city.

Names in the News

Golf great Ben Hogan was recovering from emergency colon surgery. Hogan, 82, was in the intensive care unit of All Saints Hospital in Ft. Worth, Tex., where he was in fair condition. . . . Former Kentucky basketball star Bill Spivey, whose dreams of playing in the NBA were dashed by a point-shaving scandal despite his acquittal, was found dead at 66 in his apartment in Costa Rica. . . . Cheryl Daniels of Detroit used games of 256, 246 and 237 to remain in first place entering the finals of the $60,000 California Classic in Chatsworth. . . . Former Ram receiver Harold Jackson and Houston Oiler linebacker Robert Brazile will be inducted into the Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame on May 26, along with former Laker center Zelmo Beatty and 14 others. . . . The announcement of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson--recently released from prison after serving three years for rape--as a speaker at a Mother’s Day benefit dinner to help homeless women in Fresno is drawing protests from several women’s groups.. . . Former USC All-American Debbie Green, who starred on the first U.S. team to win an Olympic volleyball medal and now is an assistant coach at Long Beach State, has been added to the sport’s Hall of Fame.